On libraries, services and networks.

November 2006 has 24 entries

A couple of reportsNovember 28, 2006A couple of relevant reports have just come over the horizon .....First, from the Research Information Network in the UK comes an overview [pdf] of researcher resource discovery behaviors and preferences:Search and discovery are critical and integral parts of the research process. As this study shows, researchers devote considerable amounts...read full entry...

Discovery, delivery, distributed inventory managementNovember 28, 2006Resource discovery has been a focus of much attention in recent years. Once discovery opportunities are provided, a focus on delivery is inevitable. Folks want to have what was discovered delivered, to get as well as find. And delivery, broadly understood, has indeed been a major focus of recent activity....read full entry...

Managing citations and referencesNovember 27, 2006My 11 year old daughter was doing a project recently for which she had to do a bibliography. I was interested to see that she used http://easybib.com to compile it: this was on the recommendation of one of her classmates. It took some of the pain out of it, and...read full entry...

Boffyflow and spikeNovember 26, 2006Peter Binkley has a thoughtful post on libraries and Second Life, which could be generalized to a variety of environments. He kindly notes some of my remarks on putting library services into the flow and goes on to say of Second Life:But is there now, or will there ever be,...read full entry...

Chicago: a gallimaufry of observationsNovember 26, 2006Light posting this week as we spent Thanksgiving and a couple of additional days in Chicago. Here are some vaguely work-related remarks, and some less so:Discovered in Chicago Comics on North Clark St the following volume: The Illustrated Librarian: 12 temporary tatoos for librarians and booklovers. Includes 'I love Dewey...read full entry...

Data curationNovember 20, 2006Chris Rusbridge is the Director of the Digital Curation Centre at the University of Edinburgh. About the DCC:Scientists, researchers and scholars across the UK generate increasingly vast amounts of digital data, with further investment in digitisation and purchase of digital content and information. The scientific record and the documentary heritage...read full entry...

Business mashupsNovember 19, 2006Business Week had an article on business mashups a few days ago. Here is one of their smaller examples. For any company mulling mashups, there's a growing variety of case studies. Caryn Truitt owns Cookies, a small Seattle shop that sells cookie-baking gear. She keeps track of inventory using an...read full entry...

Research library symposiumNovember 19, 2006Transcripts and audio recordings of the proceedings of the Research Library in the 21st Century Symposium at the University of Texas at Austin are available. I spoke on one of the panels....read full entry...

UpliftmentNovember 17, 2006I stumbled across the London Speaker Bureau just now. A pretty impressive roster of speakers just for you. It would have been interesting to know how much they cost. Here is a note on Bob Geldof:Sir Bob Geldof is an influential and inspiring speaker. He is highly entertaining and has...read full entry...

Children's book week ...November 13, 2006 To mark Children's Book Week folks here at OCLC are talking about children's books that mean something to them Here are two I like ..... The Wool-pack One of the first 'long' books I remember reading was The Wool-pack by Cynthia Harnett; the richness of its historical description made...read full entry...

Web servicesNovember 13, 2006I have a short article about web services and some of the work OCLC Research has done in this area in the current issue of Next Space, the OCLC newsletter. There is also a general article by my colleague Tom Storey about 'moving to the network level'. Thanks to Science...read full entry...

Library systems worldNovember 13, 2006It is surprising to me that there is not more discussion in the library community about the structure of the industry which supports it. Sure, there are complaints about ILS vendors, and some discussion about publishers, but very little about broader structural issues, especially as see change all around. Andrew...read full entry...

FocusNovember 12, 2006For those interested in current developments with RDA (that's AACR3 to you), Ann Chapman has a nice article in the current issue of Ariadne. William Denton mentions it and remarks on Ann's title: Interoperability Focus Officer. Ann works at UKOLN. Brian Kelly also works at UKOLN. His title is UK...read full entry...

The Browne Issue System and the reordering of experienceNovember 11, 2006I was looking for a description of the Browne Issue System because I wanted to do an entry about it and avoid having to describe it. The State Library of Queensland provides a description. Briefly, a reader has several tickets, each with a pocket. Each book has an associated card,...read full entry...

Speedy ...November 10, 2006I find that I use Technorati less these days than Google Blogsearch and Bloglines/Ask for looking at blog stuff. This is not to do with poorer results. It is to do with speed: Technorati makes you wait for a moment. And I don't like waiting. I was interested to see...read full entry...

QOTD: Wikipedia for studyNovember 08, 2006Hitwise has an interesting analyis of seasonal patterns of web traffic traffic. What I noticed was how Wikipedia use was influenced by the academic cycle. Notice the increase in visits to Wikipedia in May (during finals) and slight decline during the summer months. YouTube overtook Wikipedia in market share in...read full entry...

Metadata ...November 07, 2006Günter has a nice entry on metadata and explores correspondences across the GLAM sectors - libraries, archives and museums. He notes a specific content type in each domain, bibliographic, archival, and material culture, respectively. Then he compares the metadata stack for each type of material, using a useful typology: data...read full entry...

The Browne Issue System and public transportNovember 07, 2006I mentioned the Brown(e) Issue system below, and noted that there was not a wikipedia entry for it. A couple of interesting things. Tom Roper pointed out that it is indeed Browne and not Brown as I typed, and points to Harrod's glossary to provide some description. Interestingly, a search...read full entry...

How quickly they forgetNovember 05, 2006Wikipedia has let me down, I fear. I was looking for a brief description of the Brown Issue System. Nope. Not there. Indeed, a search on Google produces remarkably few results. Here is a brief description from one document found:With the very widely used Brown issue system, for instance, when...read full entry...

Disclosure and repositories againNovember 04, 2006In the context of talking about disclosure I had it on my list to note Google's Sitemap some time, and in particular the use of OAI-PMH in this context.The Sitemap Protocol allows you to inform search engines about URLs on your websites that are available for crawling. In its simplest...read full entry...

Web 2.0 : a quick readNovember 04, 2006The Guardian supplement has a feature on Web 2.0 where they interview the founders of a set of internet companies (delicious, flickr, bebo, wordpress, blogger, Wikipedia, writely, netvibes, digg, and others). Interviews are short and each is asked what they think Web 2.0 is, what was their 'big idea' (to...read full entry...

QOTD: MIT and SouthamptonNovember 04, 2006The MIT - Southampton research collaboration around 'web science' has been much noted:The Web Science Research Initiative (WSRI) will generate a research agenda for understanding the scientific, technical and social challenges underlying the growth of the Web. Of particular interest is the volume of information on the Web that documents...read full entry...

Repositories and disclosureNovember 02, 2006Andy Powell has posted a long and interesting post prompted by the OpenDOAR Custom Search initiative I mention below. In the course of his discussion he makes some points about repositories and discovery that intersect with recent discussion in these pages. Overall, what I conclude from this (once again) is...read full entry...